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Get to know us better! Gain valuable insights into how we think by visiting our blog, or take a look at the industry events we're frequenting on our events page. You can also geek out with us by attending one of our security management webinars, or dive head first into the products and solutions we provide in our Resource Library. There's lots to keep you busy!

The Best of Firewall Management - Removing Unused Rules

In this series, FireMon leadership shares their favorite features of the latest release of our firewall management solution, Security Manager. Click Here to subscribe to the blog.

Rule Usage analysis to identify unused rules is a core feature first invented by FireMon and now central to our market space. Beyond “cleaning up” the mess, there are real security benefits to removing those unused rules.

Unused rules are like leaving the keys in a running car that wastes gas and exposes unnecessary risk of someone stealing the car. Unused firewall rules bloat the policy, causing it to run slower and expose the network to unneeded risk of an attacker exploiting the open access.

Many users who install FireMon Security Manager find thousands of rule issues that need to be addressed. It can be pretty overwhelming. We’ve published some good webinars discussing what we consider a good strategy for rule review and removal:

Start with the technical mistakes (hidden and shadowed rules).

Move to business issues (unused rules and objects, compliance issues).

Work to improve the remaining rules by tightening them to only the access that is needed (TFA).

Security Manager Version 8 has created a new way to evaluate these rules by combining usage data with assessment data. The theory is pretty simple: if you have a rule that is not being used (no business purpose) AND it has significant security or compliance violations, then it is a rule that is both unnecessary and exposes the organization to a lot of risk. The result is a prioritized list of rules that should be reviewed for immediate removal.

Take a look at the chart on the left and the table at the bottom of the screenshot taken from our Policy Dashboard. The large bar on the left in the chart shows all the unused rules. The small red block at the top are the rules with Critical Control failures that are also unused. A user can click on that bar chart to be taken to the Rules List page listing all the rules that are unused and have Critical Control Failures.

The table shows the top 20 unused rules, sorted by those with the highest cumulative severity (a score generated by combining all the severities of controls this rule has failed). Both of these represent rules that should be at the top of an administrator's list to remediate immediately.

Events

Webinars

Traditional security models are all about the current state – but in the current state of cyber-security, by the time new rules are written, they’re obsolete. Resources have changed, topologies have shifted, traffic has evolved, and applications grew new arms and legs.

Most organizations that I talk to still have their networks designed for 90's era attacks. A hard perimeter and little to nothing on the inside. The one common exception is the part of the network that processes credit card data since PCI DSS specifically identifies the Cardholder Data Network (CDN) and requires controls around it.

Join David Monahan, managing research director at leading IT analyst firm Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), and discover the difference between organizations using an SPOA solution to manage their firewall environments versus those not using one of these solutions.

Using Security Policy And Automation (SPOA) Tools To Reduce The Attack Surface

Attack surfaces have expanded greatly in the past several years, in part because of the amount of new applications coming online via Internet of Things and increasingly connected technology. Organizations have an admittedly tough time keeping up with all the new touchpoints and the rapid expansion of the attack surface. Complete defense is nearly impossible, and many companies struggle with visibility issues, mismatched or misaligned firewall policies, and an inability to comprehensively test the security configurations they do have

Cloud technology gives enterprises faster application deployment, instant storage, workload versatility and pricing models that decrease initial capital investment. It is no wonder enterprises are making the move to the cloud.

Migrations run the risk of cost overrun, delays and disruption of network service - often due to a lack of personnel and process to efficiently and effectively manage. To ensure a successful migration, consider these four key factors: 1) identifying and removing technical mistakes, 2) removing unused access, 3) refining and organizing what remains and 4) continuous, real-time monitoring.

Network Security Policy Management (NSPM) continues to be a difficult practice for organizations the world over. In the last 20 years, network security policies (e.g. firewall rules) have grown by more than 3,500%. Yes, you read that number correctly. Why is that?

Gartner research has uncovered a number of security policy challenges for enterprises. Among these challenges are the typical assessments necessary to fortify policy for compliance and improved security posture.

Welcome to the world of overflowing regulations and compliance standards, of evolving infrastructure and the ever-present breach. It's a world where 72% of security and compliance personnel say their jobs are more difficult today than just two years ago.

Firewall technology has come a long way since its initial, most rudimentary forms. Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFW) are the latest development, and organizations are accelerating adoption to the new technology. But NGFWs aren’t a fix-all solution.

Forrester’s Zero Trust Model of information security helps teams develop robust prevention, detection and incident response capabilities to protect their company's vital digital business ecosystem. This report will help security pros understand the technologies best suited to empowering and extending their Zero Trust initiatives and will detail how Forrester sees this model and framework growing and evolving.

The customer sought a data analysis tool to correlate application data with network and security data to spot service-impacting anomalies. They did not have an accurate picture of interoperability between applications and the underlying infrastructure.

This national insurance provider had three problems to tackle regarding their firewall policies. First, the number of rules under management was overwhelming staff and processes. They needed to increase visibility and effectiveness of their firewall change request/workflow ticketing process. And they also need help maintaining compliance PCI DSS requirements.

Each time this Global MSP engaged a new customer, they had to onboard the firewalls – sometimes hundreds per engagement – into their network. Part of the onboarding process required assessing the policies against internal best practices – a manual, line-by-line process that took an average of 16 hours/firewall and was extremely error-prone.